Xanti Schawinsky and the Fascist Plebiscitary Elections of 1934: Everyday Design Practice and Visual Culture in Early 1930’s Italy

Abstract

With Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933, the Bauhausler Xanti Schawinsky sought refuge in fascist Italy until the uncertain political situation and a career choice prompted him to move to the United States in 1936. Identified as the link between Italy and the Bauhaus, Schawinsky holds a special place in the history of Italian graphic design. However, his key role as promoter of modernism has not been subjected to scrutiny by looking at the work he did, networks he established, and design exchange he fostered.

Schawinsky’s propaganda poster for the plebiscitary elections of 1934 is the focus of this article. Drawing on photographic documents and primary sources—including correspondences, archival documents, and autobiographic accounts—we seek to clarify the circumstances under which someone fleeing Nazi Germany eventually designed works that served as vehicles for fascist propaganda. To this end, we ground the poster “1934-XII SI” within the larger sociocultural and professional context, historical and political circumstances of early 1930’s Italy. We pair close visual analysis with a contextualized understanding to employ the poster as a case study to explore how fascist ideology was ingrained in everyday practice and show how the line between political and commercial discourses was blurred.

Like many fellow artists and designers living in Germany in the early 1930s, the Swiss visual artist, photographer, graphic and set designer of Polish-Jewish descent Alexander “Xanti” Schawinsky (Basel, 1904–Locarno, 1979) fled the country when Adolf Hitler assumed power in 1933. But unlike most of them, he sought refuge in fascist Italy. Schawinsky had enrolled at the Bauhaus in 1924, focusing on stage design and experimental photography. In 1929, he was appointed head of the graphics department at the building authority in Magdeburg. At the end of 1931, he moved to Berlin, where he worked as a freelancer collaborating with, among others, Walter Gropius and Herbert Bayer. Two years later, unemployed, faced with anti-Semitic aggression, and the Gestapo knocking at his door, Schawinsky left Germany and moved to Milan via Switzerland. In 1936, the uncertain political situation in Italy and professional considerations prompted him to depart once more. This time, he moved to the United States where he met up again with fellow Bauhauslers and began teaching at Black Mountain College in North Carolina.

Schawinsky holds a special place in the history of Italian graphic design. His period in Milan is mentioned in most books, where he is identified as the link between Italy and the Bauhaus.¹ Since the early 2010s, Schawinsky has been the subject of increasing scholarly interest with exhibitions and monographs devoted to him.² This recent literature has re-evaluated his role as a member of the Bauhaus inner circle and examined his career in the United States.³ The Italian years, however, remain largely undocumented. Outside the historiography of Italian graphic design, there is an aspect of Schawinsky’s work in Italy that has attracted scholars’ interest, namely his propaganda poster for the fascist plebiscitary elections of 1934 (Figure 1). Time and again, “1934-XII SI” has been used to illustrate the relationship between modernism and fascist regimes.⁴ However, scholarly analysis has been often limited to the use of modernist techniques and aesthetics as vehicles of fascist propaganda. Surprisingly little research has been conducted in situating the poster within its wider context, and its political dimension has been underestimated framework.⁵

Our aim here is to use “1934-XII SI” and Schawinsky’s personal and professional experience under Fascism as a case study to rediscover the significance of fascist visual culture. In adopting an approach, advocated by design historians Grace Lees-Maffei and Nic Maffei, that “combines detailed formalist analysis with contextual understanding of graphic design in action,” we are reading graphic design in the cultural context.⁶ As such, we ground Schawinsky’s poster within the larger sociocultural context and historical and political circumstances of early 1930’s Italy in an attempt, as historian Paul Betts advocates, “towards replacing earlier ideologically-driven stories of all-powerful elites and manipulated masses with more nuanced cultural histories of the complex interplay of ideas, institutions and everyday practices.”⁷ To this end, we begin with some biographical information and a visual analysis of “1934-XII SI”; discuss uses and mediation of the poster; and then link Schawinsky’s accommodation of fascist rhetoric to the graphic and artistic climate, the socio-cultural situation, and the professional context of the period. In mapping a network of related works and professional experiences, we seek to clarify the circumstances under which Schawinsky found himself designing a work so closely linked to Benito Mussolini’s propaganda.

A Bauhausler in Fascist Italy

Schawinsky arrived in Milan in the late autumn of 1933.⁸ In Italy, he could rely on both personal and professional networks. His sister Anja was a ballet dancer in Florence, where she had married a local entrepreneur, Aldo Bruzzichelli. In Milan, Schawinsky could count on Luciano Baldessari, whom he had probably met in Berlin in the mid-1920s. The architect introduced Schawinsky to a community of artists, architects, and designers who were eager to hear about his first-hand experience of the Bauhaus. Soon after his arrival in town, he began working as a consultant for Antonio Boggeri at the recently established Studio Boggeri. The presence of Schawinsky helped make the reputation of the Milanese studio and contributed greatly to Boggeri’s efforts at positioning the studio at the forefront of Italian graphics and advertising. Despite its brevity, the Milanese period was very productive. He was commissioned by some of the most prestigious clients of the time, such as the coffee roasting company Illy-Caffè, the confectionery company Motta, and the typewriter manufacturer Olivetti, where he met and collaborated with the head of the advertising office, Renato Zveteremich.⁹

From today’s perspective, the decision to leave Nazi Germany for fascist Italy might appear unfortunate. Indeed, most artists and intellectuals who chose to relocate or were forced to leave Nazi-occupied lands selected more favorable places of refuge, with the United States and the UK as major migration hubs.¹⁰ However, early 1930’s Italy was a rather appealing destination for those who were either victims of racial discrimination or whose career was hindered under Nazi rule.¹¹ Favorable conditions included no need to apply for a visa or provide proof of funds rule, and easy access to residency and work permits. Moreover, until the promulgation of the racial laws in 1938, Jewish refugees were welcomed and could work in fascist Italy. By contrast—and due to the structural affinity between the two regimes—politically active émigrés and opponents of the National Socialists were turned away. Thus, émigrés to Italy were mostly apolitical.

Without denying the authoritarian nature of Italian Fascism, nor downplaying its political repression or trivializing its atrocity, one could argue that the country offered a viable alternative to Germany. The experiences of Imre Reiner, Elizabeth Friedländer, and Bernard Rudofsky confirm that 1930’s Italy—Milan in particular—was seen as a safe place where foreigners could pursue a career in design, architecture, advertising, and publishing. Reiner, a Hungarian Jew at the time based in Switzerland, was already working with Studio Boggeri when Schawinsky arrived in town.¹² Friedländer, a Jewish German graphic and type designer, moved to Milan in 1936. Here, she worked for the publisher Mondadori and the magazine Domus until the racial laws in 1938 forced her to seek refuge in the UK.¹³ The Austrian architect Rudofsky lived and practiced in Italy from 1932 to 1938, when he fled Europe for Latin America following Nazi Germany’s Anschluss of Austria in March that year.¹⁴ Moving, at Gio Ponti’s invitation, from Naples to Milan in October 1937, Schawinsky joined the editorial team of Domus and pursued collaborative design work.

Despite the apparent mildness of fascism, foreigners did not escape the regime’s mechanisms of surveillance and repression. In his autobiography, Schawinsky recalled that he received regular visits from an officer who would “inquire about [his] well-being and whether [he] liked Italy.”¹⁵ They talked about painting, music, and theater over a glass of vermouth; politics was not mentioned. Schawinsky also claimed that, despite their outward political leanings, “I was assured that my friends were liberal-thinking citizens of the world” who had unwillingly endorsed the regime and joined in the fascist syndicates out of constrained choice rather than real enthusiasm.¹⁶ Finally, he mentioned that the only convinced fascist of his guesthouse that he was aware of was a young architect who was despised by all the other guests as he spied on political conversations and blackmailed people.

The autobiographical account suggests Schawinsky’s awareness of the regime’s use of coercion and control over access to social benefits as tools to condition people’s attitudes and behavior, and to set with limiting framework within which they navigated their everyday lives during the twenty years of fascist rule. Moreover, it implicitly challenges the authenticity of the popular support for the regime. As bluntly put by Paul Corner, “popular reaction to fascism … cannot be judged … by the same criteria that would be applied to popular political reactions under democracy.”¹⁷ These were the conditions that one has to consider when questioning Schawinsky’s attitude towards Fascism and the choices he made during his time in Milan between 1933 and 1936.

Fascist Modernism

Although proving ill-fated in the long term, Schawinsky’s stay in Milan was well-timed. It coincided with a first phase of the German–Italian relations as identified by Ruth Ben-Ghiat in the period between Hitler’s 1933 rise to power in Germany and the 1936 Rome–Berlin Axis, which reinforced the relationship between the two dictatorships.¹⁸ During this period “culture emerged as [a] main arena for Italians to assert the primacy of their own brand of fascism.”¹⁹ Italian Fascists’ greater tolerance of modernists than that shown by National Socialists became one of the dichotomies between Italy and Germany.

The channels of communication between the two countries had been open since the 1920s. As already pointed out by Jeffrey T. Schnapp, “the flow of cultural and intellectual capital was equally intense” in both directions, especially in the fields of industrial design and architecture.²⁰ A couple of months prior to Schawinsky’s arrival, Milan’s graphic designers and critics had the chance to see the graphic works by exponents of the New Typography at the 5^th Milan Triennale, where the type designer Paul Renner had curated the German Pavilion on behalf of the German Werkbund. When not in person, they could read about it in trade magazines of the period— not only Campo Grafico and Graphicus, as well as Casabella and Edilizia Moderna, but also international magazines circulating in the country—that became platforms for intense debates on the updating of Italian graphics.²¹ Schawinsky was thus welcomed by a receptive environment where the seeds of modern graphics had already been sown.

After the closure of the Bauhaus, modernists were left wondering about their fate in Nazi Germany and “Fascist Italy … provided [a] reason for … hopefulness.”²² As Jonathan Petropoulos argued, for those like Gropius who were trying to find a way of getting along with the Nazi regime, Mussolini’s more pluralistic cultural policy appeared as “a model for reconciling modernism with Fascism.”²³ However, as Betts point out, this binary representation of Nazi culture as incompatible with modernism is biased as it does not take into account “the ample evidence that the National Socialists—despite their own propaganda—often openly appropriated modernism for their own ends.”²⁴ This was especially true for graphic design as “the [Nazi] regime allowed and even encouraged the usage of Bauhaus graphics in various venues so as to project a modernist self-image.”²⁵

Bayer’s work for the National Socialists is a case in point here, for it shows that not all modernists suffered occupationally, nor were they “immune from the seductions of opportunity in the Third Reich, in which careers hinged on overt or tacit accommodation.”²⁶ Well-liked by the National Socialists, Bayer became one of the most successful and best-paid graphic designers in the Third Reich.²⁷ In particular, he contributed to a number of propaganda events with the design of brochures and other kinds of printed matter. He saw little, if any, problem in lending his professional abilities to the regime. As had been the case with Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, who tried to collaborate with the National Socialists before emigrating for career reasons, Bayer’s political position “vacillated between accommodation and opportunism in order to carry on a formally uncompromised modernism.”²⁸ It was out of professional considerations and fear over financial straits that he eventually decided to emigrate to the United States in 1938, after five years of Nazi rule—although not before having carefully planned his departure in advance by activating and cultivating a well-established personal and professional network. A detailed analysis of Bayer’s experience and work in Nazi Germany goes beyond the scope of this article. Nevertheless, by complementing those of Schawinsky in fascist Italy, it introduces a more complex understanding of the relationship between modernist aesthetics and politics that we explore further in this article by looking closer at “1934-XII SI.”

1934-XII SI

The two main ways of visualizing Fascism—namely, the portrait of the leader and images documenting mass participation in public events—conflate into “1934-XII SI.”²⁹ Mussolini’s very distinctive profile—with his large square jaw, full lips, and thick neck—occupies the upper half of the poster. In the lower part, Mussolini’s black shirt is made out of a multitude of faces of depersonalized people that get lost in the crowd from which the leader emerges as the literal head of the Italian people. The white faces in the crowd mirror the enlarged black dots of the halftone screen. The grainy quality of Mussolini’s portrait calls attention to the reprographic technique and stresses the mechanically mediated aspect of the image. As such, Schnapps argues, the image “drive[s] home the equation between modern mass politics and the modern mass medium of the chromolithographic poster.”³⁰

Two typographic elements frame the photomontage: the double date “1934-XII” of the fascist calendar year and the word “SI” (yes) superimposed over the acclaiming multitude that makes up Mussolini’s body. Images of rallies of fascist youth groups, air fleets, and archaeological sites are embedded in the background of the “S.” The numbers of voters per election district are registered on the “I,” together with the overall results of the general election held on March 26th, 1934: 99.84 percent votes in favor of the PNF, Partito Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party), and 0.15 percent dissenting ones.

An aspect of the poster has often passed unnoticed, especially to those who have analyzed it through reproductions or from behind glass, and that is the verso. The poster is, in fact, double-sided and folded four times. Of the nine panels on the verso, three feature illustrations that appear as the poster unfolds. Chronologically, they represent three key moments of the rise of Fascism. First, an amorphous shape frames the facade of Castani Palace in Piazza San Sepolcro in Milan, where Mussolini proclaimed the principles of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Fasces of Combat) during a rally held on March 23rd, 1919. Second, the silhouette of a hand performing the Roman salute encloses an acclaiming crowd that celebrates the landslide victory of Mussolini’s Lista Nazionale (National List) on April 6th, 1924, at the last multi-party general elections until 1946. Third, the outline of a flag is used as a synecdoche for a rally of Blackshirts waving a sea of fascist flags to celebrate the victory of the PNF—by then the only legally permitted party in the country—at the general elections held on March 24th, 1929. The numbers that feature in the front and back of the poster register the growth of support for the fascist movement from 147 supporters at the rally in Piazza San Sepolcro to the 10,045,477 votes at the 1934 plebiscite. The 1934 general elections were the last to be held under fascist rule: by choosing between two ballot cards for “SI” or “NO” options, voters were asked to either approve or reject the single party list put forward by the PNF.

La Rivista Illustrata del Popolo d’Italia

The folded poster was inserted as a loose-leaf sheet in the April 1934 issue of La Rivista Illustrata del Popolo d’Italia (hereafter RIPI). The magazine was the monthly illustrated supplement of the fascist daily newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia. It was edited by Marco Luigi Poli and published by Alfieri & Lacroix. The April 1934 issue was entirely devoted to the celebration of the fascist referendum. Perhaps surprisingly, neither the poster nor Schawinsky are mentioned in it. “1934-XII SI” is the only loose-leaf sheet inserted in RIPI that we came across during our research. The editorial decision turns out to be less exceptional when we consider the many large-format foldouts—two to six times wider than the standard page size—that the magazine published at the time. These foldouts were meant for display and carried an implicit propaganda value. They often featured panoramic photomontages of multitudes gathered around a visible or invisible leader at political rallies.³¹

The poster was not the only work by Schawinsky to feature in RIPI. Most works, including “1934-XII SI,” were signed “xanti – studio boggeri.” Here it is worth mentioning that Boggeri had spent the eight years prior to the founding of Studio Boggeri in charge of the typo-lithography department at Alfieri & Lacroix. Over the years, works by Studio Boggeri and its consultants featured on a regular basis in RIPI. Boggeri was the intermediary between Schawinsky and the editor of the illustrated magazine. As recalled by Schawinsky, after his arrival in town “Boggeri immediately sold all [his] pictures to … the editor of Natura and Rivista del Popolo. … Mr Poli also gave [him] some interesting commissions for full-page illustrations, leaving the interpretation entirely up to [him]. He wanted to use some of these pictures as covers for his magazines.”³²

Schawinsky designed two covers for RIPI and contributed several photographs and photomontages. For the November 1933 issue, he devised a vehicle of lukewarm propaganda for the regime in the form of a photomontage with images of the summer camps attended by the fascist youth organizations.³³ Featuring the head of a woman hovering above a generic Italian architectural landscape, the cover for the December 1933 issue recalls Bayer’s contemporary covers for the German fashion magazine Die neue Linie.³⁴ The issue also includes a three-page wide foldout that conveys a straightforward propaganda message.³⁵ The graphic composition combines a quote from Mussolini’s speech on corporatism with an image of the Duce performing the Roman salute from behind. The cover for the May 1934 issue is a mild reminder of the rhetoric of “return to order” as expressed in the work of the painter Mario Sironi and the Novecento Art movement.³⁶ The fasces in the background offer a bland contribution to the fascist rhetoric. Schawinsky’s last contribution to RIPI consists of three black-and-white photographs portraying some dancers and an actress that were published in the January and July 1935 issues of the magazine.³⁷

As Schnapp already noticed, the insert in RIPI is an updated, double-sided version of an earlier poster.³⁸ This previous version differs from the insert for the absence of the “SI” superimposed onto Mussolini’s black shirt (Figure 2).³⁹ According to Schnapp, the poster featuring only the inscription “1934-XII” was the true poster meant to be affixed on the wall, whereas the double-sided version (“1934-XII SI”) was meant to be folded and unfolded. The latter was a keepsake produced only after the referendum to celebrate the victory of the PNF. Schnapp’s argument is valid. However, it lacks some key information that allows us to contextualize further Schawinsky’s compliance to Fascism and reveals two more, and so-far unknown, versions of the poster.

The Bar Motta and Its Window Displays

Two black-and-white pictures provide further information about the context and show that “1934-XII SI” was actually one of four different versions. The first picture was published in the November 1935 issue of RIPI.⁴⁰ It portrays the entrance to the bar Motta located on the way into the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II on the side towards Milan Cathedral (Figure 3). Schawinsky’s poster appears hanging above the doorway. The second picture documents the visit to the Motta factory by Rino Parenti, the Federal Secretary of the PNF for Milan (Figure 4).⁴¹ This time, Schawinsky’s poster appears in the background. If we take a close look at the poster above the doorway of the bar, we can identify it as another version of the two already mentioned. What differentiates this version is that no typographic element is superimposed on the photomontage. Thus, it seems safe to assume that the poster in Figure 3 was the original photomontage, which was modified later. The poster in Figure 4 features yet another version of Schawinsky’s poster. This fourth—and, to our knowledge, last—version differs from the previous three in the writing “1936-XV.” The modified writing dates the picture to the last two months of 1936. The fact that the poster was not only reissued but also modified after Schawinsky’s departure suggests that the designer did not have control over its use and circulation.

Both pictures link Schawinsky’s poster to Motta. But what was Motta’s interest in using the poster? Let us first consider the propaganda display for the flagship bar. During his stay in town, Schawinsky designed a number of window displays for Motta. In these, he combined merchandise with an experimental use of enlarged cut-out photographs and photomontages, blown-up typography, and juxtaposed layers of colored transparent slabs. As such, Schawinsky’s window displays for Motta were regarded by contemporaries as public exhibitions of the most modern techniques and aesthetics.⁴² However, this was not the case with the window display in Figure 3, which is rather basic: two oversized fasces enclose the doorway and frame the photomontage, while the letters D, U, and X stand on three pedestals in the window. The shot is undated and captioned “The entrance to a great pastry shop in Milan on a day of popular jubilation.” The text lacks any reference to the image. Despite the lack of specific information, it does not seem too far-fetched to date the photo to the very time of the fascist plebiscite. Here it is worth pointing out that the window displays changed periodically. They were thematic and featured references to seasonal festivities, contemporary sporting events—such as the annual bicycle race Giro d’Italia—and other initiatives. A propaganda window display might have seemed thus appropriate for the occasion of the fascist referendum.

Figure 4 shows how the poster was reused and reedited by Motta over the years. Visits to everyday venues—as, in this case, to the Motta factory—by members of the PNF, or even better by Mussolini himself, were staged events and propaganda tools. They were expressions of the regime’s efforts at appropriating the familiar, informing ordinary life, and affecting both private and public leisure and work time.⁴³ So, what was there to gain for Motta? The company promoted visits to its factories in an attempt to involve the general public by taking them behind the scenes. As Dino Villani, head of the advertising department, explained: “photographs of visits and events, which we displayed in our shops or published in newspapers and magazines, … were intended to let the public know that Princes and Poets, journalists, artists, and clergymen visited Motta as one would only visit a great institution.”⁴⁴ Factory visits and their mediation thus contributed to Villani’s communication strategy to turn Motta from a company selling delicious confectionery into an aspect of Italy’s popular culture and tradition.

At the time, Motta was one of many companies cashing in on the popularity of Mussolini. Indeed, the Duce was at the centre of Italian consumer culture and commercial activities. As Stephen Gundle pointed out, the regime “invaded city centres with its parades and spectacles, its watchwords and slogans; busts and photographs of Mussolini appeared in shop windows, magazines were filled with news of the Duce and posters decorated city walls, … much of this was orchestrated from above, but some of it was simply the product of a movement generated by popular expectations and the enthusiastic participation of individuals and businesses.”⁴⁵ Requests to commercialize Mussolini’s name or image were accepted or rejected based on the morality and political standing of the applicant. The exploitation of Mussolini’s fame and popularity for mere financial speculation was cause for rejection in an effort “to avoid trivialization and banalization of Fascism’s greatest asset.”⁴⁶ In his study of Italian advertising and mass culture during Fascism, Gundle mentions Motta in particular, pointing out how Villani avoided blatantly linking the company to Mussolini, unlike the Metzger brewery, “whose advertising explicitly alluded to the ubiquity and the magic properties of the letter ‘M’.”⁴⁷ True, Motta does not seem to have exploited the popularity of Mussolini for commercial purposes. However, the pictures show that the company was not immune to attempts to gain favor with the regime by showing support at least during official occasions, such as the general elections of 1934 and the visit by a PNF member to the factory.

The fact that Motta used what we identified as the original photomontage of “1934-XII SI” and a later version of the poster that was modified after Schawinsky’s departure does perhaps suggest that the company claimed some special rights over the work. If we push this theory further, we can speculate that “1934-XII SI” might have originally been the result of a private initiative, only later edited and reprinted for RIPI. This assumption is not backed up by further evidence. However, the hypothesis of the private initiative goes along with a “distinguishing feature of the Italian Fascist experience” as identified by Dennis P. Doordan in “the degree to which market forces played an active role in the evolution of political design.”⁴⁸ Indeed, the cult of the Duce was reinforced from below through individual initiatives that blurred the line between political and commercial discourses.⁴⁹ If we are willing to indulge in speculation, the distinction between private venture and official commission also suggests economic and professional motivations behind the commission and design of the original version of “1934-XII SI” rather than genuine enthusiasm for the regime.

The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan at the Time of the Fascist Referendum

On the occasion of the general elections of 1934, Motta’s decision to display Schawinsky’s poster in the window of its flagship bar—as we speculated in the previous section—was all the more appropriate as it fitted in, and contributed to, the overall rhetoric of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. Indeed, the double arcade was specially decked out for the event. A propaganda display stood where the two arcades intersect, less than a hundred meters away from the bar Motta. The temporary display was conceived by the graphic designer and editor of the architecture magazine Casabella, Edoardo Persico, and the industrial and graphic designer, Marcello Nizzoli. It consisted of a gridded structure of white and orange scaffolding in the shape of an airplane (Figure 5).⁵⁰ A picture with the silhouette of Mussolini exhorting the crowds appeared multiple times and was distributed along the grid next to excerpts from his speeches, signs praising the Duce and the fascist revolution, and other photographic panels.

If we zoom in on Figure 5, we can identify the picture of Mussolini—the same that hung from the scaffoldings—pasted onto the pillars along the arcades. Next to it hung at least two other propaganda posters that recalled Schawinsky’s design in their use of modernist techniques and aesthetics to further fascist ideology. They were part of a series of five posters that Persico designed in collaboration with Nizzoli, Bramante Buffoni, and Umberto Zimelli (Figure 6). Grain production and public health were the subjects of two posters. Another declared the love of the Italian people for their Duce. Quotes from Mussolini’s speeches appeared on the remaining two posters of the series.

As Carlo Vinti pointed out, Persico’s posters for the fascist plebiscite have been “virtually banned from the history of Italian graphic design, probably precisely because they document the close connection between the new typography and fascist propaganda.”⁵¹ Even contemporary critics ignored their propaganda content to concentrate exclusively on form and techniques. This was the case with typographer and graphics critic Guido Modiano, who considered Persico’s design for the five posters exemplary in his combination of typography and photomontage. Moreover, he praised the use of modularity to give a certain unity to the series.⁵² Featuring photographs with extreme close-ups, dramatic silhouettes, aerial perspectives, and unexpected changes of scale, combined with a condensed sans-serif lettering in an asymmetrical layout, the five posters illustrate the ways in which the compositional principles of the New Typography were adopted and adapted by local designers, and then used on content attributable to fascist rhetoric. As such, they demonstrate that Schawinsky’s poster was not an isolated exception imported from abroad, but rather that it fitted in with the local graphic design scene.

Photographic and video documents help us to piece together the circumstances of the commissioning, design, and circulation of Persico’s posters. We read in Modiano’s comment that they “were conceived in three days, in Milan, for the propaganda at the latest general elections.”⁵³ Modiano does not provide further information about the circulation of the posters. In Figure 5, we located two posters from the series in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II at the time of the temporary propaganda display. Vinti had already spotted them in a short sequence of a cine newsreel covering the general elections. In the sequence, some posters from the series are on show inside a Milan polling station on the day of the plebiscitary elections.⁵⁴ Since they appeared in two public locations—namely, an ordinary polling station and one of the city’s most iconic landmarks, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II—Persico’s posters were possibly the outcome of an official commission by the Milanese local authority.

The Esposizione dell’Aeronautica Italiana: Seeing Fascism from Abroad

A couple of months after the plebiscitary general elections and the publishing of “1934-XII SI” in RIPI, Schawinsky was commissioned through Studio Boggeri to design an advertisement to be displayed in the Milanese public transport system (Figure 7). Promoting the Esposizione dell’Aeronautica Italiana (Italian Aeronautical Exposition; hereafter EAI), the advertisement is additional evidence of Schawinsky’s involvement in, and contribution to, fascist propaganda events. The exhibition celebrated Italian aviation by combining historical documents with installations and exhibition design by exponents of the Rationalist movement and promoters of modern graphics.⁵⁵ Contributors included, among others, Bruno Munari, Giovanni Pintori, Erberto Carboni, Luciano Baldessari, Gian Luigi Banfi, Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso, Enrico Peressutti, and Ernesto Nathan Rogers. Schawinsky’s contribution shows that he was well-integrated into the Milanese scene thanks to his association with Studio Boggeri.

Walter Gropius and his wife Ise saw the EAI in October 1934. The couple visited Schawinsky on their way to Zurich from Rome, where Gropius had attended an international theater conference as an official delegate from Nazi Germany.⁵⁶ After their visit to the Milanese exhibition, Gropius and Schawinsky sent an enthusiastic postcard to the architects Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini. The text reads: “Congratulations and best wishes on your wonderful work at the Aeronautics.”⁵⁷ The “wonderful work” was the architects’ design for the Sala dei Precursori (Pioneers Room).

The EAI attracted Ise’s curiosity. In a letter to Marcel Breuer, she wrote: “we have not yet had such a uniformly executed and delightfully mastered exhibition in germany [sic]. … the topic was very favourable and demanded a modern presentation, but it is a rare thing to come out of an exhibition refreshed and wanting to go back again rather than tired.” The letter continues by stating that the architects and exhibition designers had learned from the Werkbundausstellung (Werkbund Exhibition) in Paris (1930) and the Bauaustellung (Building Exhibition) in Berlin (1931). Ise complained to Breuer about the current state of exhibition design in their home country: “it is a pity to see how germany [sic] is now simply failing to carry on working on these things.”⁵⁸ Finally, she pointed to the bitter irony of local critics accusing the exhibition in Milan, as well as modern architecture and design more broadly, of being too “German.”

No doubt Schawinsky had something to do with Ise’s enthusiastic response to the design and cultural scene in Milan. As we read in another letter from Ise to Breuer from April 1934, “xandi [sic] calls the shots in italy [sic] and promises to lead us all … to paradise.”⁵⁹ Writing on Schawinsky’s experience in Milan, Torsten Blume defined Italy as “the place for European graphic designers seeking refuge where creative and artistic modernism was not persecuted.”⁶⁰ The many commissions he had received since his arrival, and the genuine interest in the Bauhaus shown by a network of artists, architects, designers, and critics, as well as by private and public institutions such as the Galleria del Milione and the Milan Triennale, must have persuaded Schawinsky to believe that Milan was not only a safe place but also a place where his career and that of fellow Bauhauslers could thrive.

The Gropiuses had had first-hand experience of the Italian Fascists’ more welcoming approach and greater tolerance in the cultural world with respect to the National Socialists. During their stay in Rome, “fascism offered everything to make [them] forget about all [their] german [sic] sufferings.”⁶¹ Like many other foreign visitors, the couple was impressed by the differences between prewar Italy and fascist Italy: if the former “was in many ways likeable, but still a kind of museum,” the latter was “full of energy, and even if the machine [was] running on empty in many respects, at least it [had] been given a forward direction.”⁶² The authoritarian essence of fascism seems to have passed unnoticed, whether consciously or not.

Whether naive or deliberate, Schawinsky did not correct this misconceived perception of fascism. Indeed, Schawinsky’s decision to leave the country did not affect his positive perception of the Italian context. In the summer of 1936, he was, in fact, still promoting fascist Italy as a viable alternative to Nazi Germany. In a letter to his wife Tut, Oskar Schlemmer reported that Schawinsky had wondered if they would be interested in moving to the United States. Otherwise, Schawinsky had suggested that Schlemmer move to Italy for “there [was] a founder’s year atmosphere over there, a lot of enthusiasm, and they want[ed] the latest and newest.”⁶³ In August 1936, he was still considering Italy as an appealing destination. His departure does not seem to have been a desperate flight, but rather a deliberate, yet timely, career choice: in September 1938, the emanation of Italian racial laws would have dramatically changed his fate.

A passage from Schawinsky’s autobiography suggests that he was not as naive as evidence might suggest. Recalling his stay in fascist Italy, he wrote: “For the time being, there was no sign that things would be different five years later. … It was inconceivable to me how quickly a mood could change; for nationalism was not only incomprehensible to me but appeared as a spiritually limited manifestation of misguided people who follow their shepherd like sheep to their doom.”⁶⁴ Schawinsky’s political awareness is also implied in a post-war letter to the Italian artist, architect, and partisan Gabriele Mucchi. In it, he expresses hatred towards the Nazis and thanks the Italian people for having helped political refugees and Jews to escape from “those beasts.”⁶⁵ Fascism is not mentioned. Nevertheless, the comment makes clear Schawinsky’s stance on contemporary events.

A Propaganda Poster in Context

In this article, we attempted to understand how, in a given sociocultural situation and professional context, Schawinsky chose to design propaganda for Mussolini. In questioning his decision as dependent on the social situation and his own interest and needs, we dwelled on the realm of individual experiences. A more subjective side of Fascism and its impact on everyday life and practices emerged from our analyses of “XII-1934 SI.” Far from trivializing or minimizing Schawinsky’s involvement with Fascism, we showed how fascist ideology was ingrained in everyday practice. Once in Italy, as Klaus Voigt argued, “émigrés could not escape in their daily and work life the fascist environment around them and had to adapt in one way or another.”⁶⁶ Schawinsky operated within the limits and opportunities of Fascism. But the question of whether he was forced or willingly adapted is still uncertain. There are no grounds to assert any affinity with fascist ideology and it is tempting to dismiss Schawinsky’s participation as individual opportunism, political naïveté, or a misunderstanding of what Italian fascism really was. Still, one is left wondering how disengaged he could have been.

By pairing visual analysis with a contextualized understanding, we addressed the myopic approach of the current literature on the poster and unpacked the complex cultural significance and political dimension of fascist visual culture that emerges once one scratches beneath its eye-catching surface. For sure, Schawinsky’s accommodation to Fascism in the early 1930s was not an exception and “XII-1934 SI” was one of many works in which modernist techniques and aesthetics were invested with fascist meanings. As Vinti rightly put it: “In Italy the battle for the modern took place in a cultural and ideological framework strongly dominated by fascism and its willingness to politicise all forms of expression.”⁶⁷ In early 1930’s Italy, the line between political and commercial discourses was blurry with consequences for both individual practitioners and private companies. Benefits seemed to outweigh downsides in the eyes of Schawinsky and fellow Bauhauslers. As this article demonstrates, their responses to the Milan cultural and design scene spoke to a more complex understanding of the relationship between modernism and fascist regimes.

Acknowledgments

This publication reports on the results of a research project supported by the strategic fund of HES-SO / University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland (RCDAV) and by ECAL / University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO).

If you have any comments to make in relation to this article, please go to the journal website on http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org and access the article. There is a faculty on the site for sending e-mail responses to the editorial board and other readers.

The author has made all attempts to secure copyright and reproduction rights for the images presented. Any additional information or missing or unmentioned copyrights would be greatly appreciated.

Chiara Barbieri is a researcher in design history at ECAL / University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO). She holds a PhD in History of Design from the Royal College of Art (London) with a thesis on the professionalization of graphic design in Italy from the interwar period to the mid-1960s. Her research interests include visual and material culture in fascist Italy, national design discourses, transnational networks of design exchange, and everyday design practice.

Davide Fornari is a full professor at ECAL / University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO) where he has led the Research and Development sector since 2016. He holds a PhD in Design Sciences from University Iuav of Venice. He has authored a number of publications on the history of architecture and design in Switzerland and Italy during the twentieth century.

Footnotes